Ban on gill nets back in place

Nov. 8, 2013

File photo shows an illegal 12,000-square-foot gill net that was confiscated by officers in 1999. After a short grace period, Florida wildlife officers are once again enforcing the statewide ban on nets that entangle mullet and other fish by the gills. / File photo

After a short grace period, Florida wildlife officers are once again enforcing the statewide ban on nets that entangle mullet and other fish by the gills.

Late Wednesday, Florida’s First District Court of Appeal reinstated the ban until a lawsuit challenging the state’s 18-year-old gill net ban plays out in court.

On Friday, Florida wildlife officials had stopped enforcing the gill net ban, after a Leon County judge had ruled in favor of a group of Northwest Florida mullet fishermen.

On Oct. 22, Judge Jackie Fulford ruled that the 1994 state constitutional amendment that established the gill net ban and the rules that Florida enacted to enforce the ban are inconsistent and “grossly unfair” to mullet fishermen and the other plaintiffs involved in the suit.

But after the First District Court of Appeal’s ruling on Wednesday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission issued a memo instructing officers once again to enforce the net ban.

“Effective immediately, we are resuming enforcement of the net limitation amendment ... and all associated statutes and rules,” Col. Calvin L. Adams, Jr., FWC’s law enforcement director, wrote in a Nov. 6 memo.

“We should all be aware that this continues to be a sensitive issue. With the First District Court of Appeals overruling the Circuit Judge’s most recent order there is great potential for confusion among fishermen and other members of the public,” Adams wrote.

He urged officers to “use ample discretion and seek to educate any fishermen that may have misinformation or be unclear on the current circumstances.”

Fulford’s ruling had come at peak mullet spawning season, when the so-called roe mullet are plump with eggs. Some worried that fishermen would flock to Florida from other states to harvest the mullet had the ban not been reinstated.

Voters in 1994 approved an amendment to the state constitution banning gill nets. In writing the rules to enforce that amendment, FWC defined an illegal gill net based on the size of the mesh and overall size of the net.

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The mullet fisherman argued that it was not the intent of the amendment to ban only certain types of gill nets. Fulford agreed, saying the rules created “a legal absurdity,” according to her Oct. 22 ruling.

“We cannot have a provision in our Constitution which outlaws the use of all nets in fishing, except use of a hand thrown cast net; and at the same time have rules adopted by FWC that make exceptions to this constitutional provision,” Fulford wrote in her ruling.

Sportfishing interests pushed hard for the net ban. They said commercial fishermen were harming mullet, seatrout and other fish populations beyond recovery.

Backed by state biologists, sport fishing groups now say the ban helped several fish species rebound. They point to improvements in bait fish and black mullet — the staple food in the lagoon for redfish, snook and other sport fish.

But critics say those gains fell short for other species, such as seatrout, and might have happened anyway under the rules already in place.

More sport fishing and stormwater runoff from development, they say, still hurts fish more than their nets ever did.